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Velano Vascular Nets $17M to Roll Out Needle-Free Blood Draw

By Amirah Al Idrus | March 7, 2017

Velano Vascular raised $17 million in financing, which it will put toward scaling and commercializing its line of vascular access devices. The company scored FDA clearance for its second-generation, needle-free blood draw device last week.

Inpatient blood draws are one of the most common invasive medical procedures, with more than 400 million conducted in the U.S. each year, Velano said in a statement. The company’s PIVO device attaches to the peripheral IV line that most hospital inpatients already have, eliminating the need for repeated needle sticks.

While the benefits to the patient are obvious, the PIVO device also minimizes practitioners’ exposure to needles and lowers the risk of practitioner injury, the company said.

The single-use, disposable device works by advancing a small, flexible catheter through the IV line. From here, it can draw lab-quality blood samples. Since gaining FDA clearance and a CE mark for the original PIVO in 2015, Velano has partnered with multiple health systems to deploy the device in clinical studies or in pilot programs.

“Tens of thousands of PIVO draws across multiple health systems in the U.S. and overseas reflect that there is a better, more efficient way to draw blood,” said CEO Eric Stone in the statement. “This funding will allow us to meet the growing commercial demand and to touch millions of lives in the years ahead.”

Two new unnamed investors joined existing backers, which include First Round Capital, Kapor Capital, Sutter Health, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and White Owl Capital.

Meanwhile, Seventh Sense Biosystems is rolling out its own blood collection device, which uses an array of microneedles and vacuum pressure to draw blood in a “virtually painless” way.